Posted by
SDS on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 1:08:01 AM
Just when people thought that geography was dead,
geopolitics raises its ugly head, AGAIN. It isn't just that Iran has a lot of oil. It is that it is geographically located in a place where it can shut down the shipment of a huge percentage of the world's oil-- not just Iranian, but Iraqi and Saudi Arabian oil, by shutting down the straits of Hormuz, a 40 mile wide sea.
The fact that Ahmadinejad is nuts does not keep him from doing it. Hitler was nuts too. The answer is ----- Ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is not a dream, it is a reality. Iogen has a demonstration factory in Canada and
another plant using a different technology is slated to open in Spain soon. So the problem here is not in inventing a technology but in making it commercially viable.
For the umpteenth time, the President said it in his state of the Union message, this is not an economic issue, it is a national security issue. It needs to be treated as such.
If we can survive without imported oil ( and with Ethanol and increased drilling of our own reserves, we can) then we don't have to make nice to insane middle eastern potentates. Not only that but we seriously diminish the strategic advantage they have.
Further, if we are the owners of the technology, we can sell it to other countries that get tired of paying blood money to Iran.
We need tax breaks and tax credits, accelerated depreciation -- all the stuff that provides a real incentive to actually produce the stuff and get it on the market. We did it with synthetic rubber in World War II after the Japanese occupied a large percentage of the rubber producing countries of the world. We can do it again if we can find the will.